I've been waiting to hear Miss Nerd Cookies's own opinion about the new Amazon series, "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" (a title that is becoming more and more awkward to say in my head). Cookies is a huge Tolkien partisan, and her criticisms carry a lot of weight for me. While unscholarly, Tolkien-ignorant critics like Adam Olinger are fine with the series (not horrible, not great, says Olinger), the critics with any appreciation for Tolkien have been left utterly scandalized at the brazen liberties taken with the canon.
The above criticism is billed as Part One of what I assume will be a series of several videos exploring the bastardization issue from multiple angles. I definitely look forward to subsequent reviews by Miss Nerd Cookies.
OK, I just watched this.... The first thing I'll say is that I find her dreamy, wispy, sing-songy narration a little bit hard to listen to, but that's neither here nor there.
ReplyDeleteAs for the content of the review, this is the first review I've seen that deals with the actual story and not promotional materials. While I think Professor Tolkien would object to the "wokification" of the story, I'm personally more interested in this sort of critique (as you can imagine). All I can say that I was seething as I listened to this--this made me genuinely angry. In fact, I'm still so angry right now that I'm not sure I can properly organize my thoughts. Scandalized, indeed.
I will comment on one aspect of the story: how Finrod's death has been completely bastardized to provide a revenge motivation for Galadriel. Legendarium aside, I thought we had agreed that it sucked when women existed in a story only to die and provide a revenge motive for the male lead. How is this any different from that? Or is it OK because it's "gender-swapped"?
Wow. Yeah, I am never going to watch this. I would end up punching holes in our walls, and nobody wants that.
It's hard to reconcile her airy-fairy presentation style with some of the harsh things she says, especially toward the very end of the video. There are several YouTubers I watch who also have annoying presentation styles, but I stick with them because of the content. I'm not actually subscribed to Nerd Cookies, but she constantly pops up as a recommendation because the all-knowing algorithm is conscious of my preferences. I'm morbidly curious as to what Part 2 will be about.
ReplyDelete"Airy-fairy." That's a good descriptor. I feel like she could read a terrorist manifesto and it would be the most horrifying thing I've ever heard.
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